


simmering waters to calm

by whisperlings



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-16
Updated: 2012-12-16
Packaged: 2017-11-21 06:17:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/594423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whisperlings/pseuds/whisperlings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He returns knowing of the proposal, the wedding date, everything. Rationally, he understands. Irrational emotions are another matter entirely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	simmering waters to calm

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

He smashed the infernal clock across the room, throwing the knife right into the glass, and it shattered as it fell to the ground from the impact. Sherlock was sure that his wrist hurt more than the clock ever could, though. If the clock had been sentient, with its annoying ticking in his ears still rounding out its echo.

The only sound that could calm him were replays of violins that quartered off the clock’s ticking and squashed it away.

_I need you, John, I do, and it’s very human and strange and you’re with her and you're gone. You're gone, aren't you?_

Every moment in the flat unhinged him, rattled away the screws holding the doors upright, brought the walls down crumbling, but he still survived. He pulled himself together, though, having dinner with John and Mary and Mrs. Hudson, but his chest was squeezed, and he felt as if he was in a woman’s corset for his struggle to breathe. He smiled, tight and he knew John could tell the difference, but nothing was said between them before he and Mary left for the evening.

Sherlock wanted to remind in full, gory detail what he had done, _and of course it was ninety-five percent for you, five to not forget Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson._ Perhaps he’d gotten off thinking that people did need him, and he’d let John get to him like that. It was his mistake, his momentous error to let himself start to care about such matters beyond “just the work.” Before John, his greatest misgivings had been giving in to his bodily needs and wants and desires, but John Watson had brought another entire element to his life.

He stayed with Molly, bless her heart so much larger than his would ever be, and she made him hot chocolate just the way he liked it with a few marshmallows. She nearly reminded him of his mum, just much more attentive. And maybe that’s what this all came down to, his selfish want for attention. He’d always had attention given to him to a degree – perhaps not in childhood, certainly not the way he’d wanted – but he’d had it some way or another. Nearly always negative, though, before John. Or none at all, however it came to be.

“You did know that he proposed before you even returned, Sherlock.”

Sherlock nudged at the handle on his mug and turned it counter-clockwise, making a noise at the back of his throat. His eyes glanced up at hers, “I did. I’m okay with it.”

He knew the sigh was coming before it even reached his ears, and her words weren’t a surprise either, “You’re lying to yourself, Sherlock. You don’t want him to leave the flat and live with her. You – you want everything to stay the same. But it _can’t._ ” If he was his old self, he might have ruined her glass mug, but he only shrugged and finished his drink.

He set the mug by the sink, thanked Molly for her hospitality, and left with his overcoat buttoned and scarf comfortably tightened around his neck, because it was February and the wind was blustering, stinging his cheeks and nose and causing his ears to feel numb after several minutes of walking. Only when he struggled to move his fingers, red in their appearance now, did he get a cab for himself, and thankfully the heating system of the car was in near top-notch shape. 

Selfishness was laid in his bones, riddled throughout his veins and unable to stop until his own heart would decide to. Selflessness, however, was as scarce within him as stupidity on the broad subject of chemistry. Yet it had awakened from its long and deep slumber during those three years away, but had snapped shut when he’d made it all _safe_ again. Or as safe as life could ever get when people associated themselves with Sherlock Holmes.

He wanted to be selfish with John, because he had done so much, or at least _felt_ he had in what felt like countless months away. In some sense, he was sewn together in stitches, stitches that pieced together the Time Between. He didn’t want to kiss John; oh god no, it wasn’t like that. Maybe he wanted a hug, some kind of human contact of thankfulness. Maybe he just wanted time, time that he had lost and times he had had to watch John slowly move on with his life. Move on with Mary.

Sherlock did not hate Mary. She hadn’t done anything but make John happy, happy enough again to feel like he could propose to her and she’d say yes. (And she had. Obviously. It was there, plain for even Sherlock to see.) She was right for John, and he made her happy, too. That still didn’t mean he was free of rash bursts of incomprehensible anger towards them both, though. He was childish and stupid and he hated himself, but where was his gain in all of this? 

He knew he needed to get used to it, just like Mycroft had told him. He had done his "good deed" for humanity, and he should go back to his experiments and whatever else made him happy (besides John). He needed to delete John, but he didn’t think he could… nor did he wish to, however much he tried to deny it. He would simply have to come to terms of what had happened while he had remained stagnant. What had changed while he had supposedly been six feet under and incognizant.

Rationally, he had worked through it. He had the wedding date written down in the calendar in his mind palace, though he’d marked through it twice and rewritten it twice the same. Progress, though – it was about progress. He texted John less as John replied back with greater inconsistency. John rarely texted him first anymore, and perhaps that was what affected Sherlock the most. The lack of physical presence had never hurt him, and he’d gotten even more used to it over the few years he'd been dead.

But then John asked him if he was free on the last evening of the month. In a text, with an image of John attached. An image of John holding up a string of pink paper hearts. Sherlock pursed his lips and enlarged the image, unable then to keep back a smile. Especially because of John’s face and gesturing hand toward the hearts, as if he didn’t understand what purpose they served.

When they met at a café between their two places, Sherlock asked John if Mary had made the pink paper hearts. Well, more stated than asked. If he knew John (which he still did), John didn’t have the capability to do something like that.

John pulled him into a hug in response.

“I… um.”

“Shut up, you rail-thin idiot. And you need to cut your hair.”

Sherlock wrapped his arms around John and let himself breathe again. He had never been the most natural at hugging, but that didn’t mean he was oblivious to its effects on the mind. Rush of serotonin to the head, and he smiled without forcing it. It was the singular effect of having _John_ around again. He only wished he could keep John on as a colleague, taking him along on cases, but this… this would have to work out instead, this would have to be it.

They ordered a plate of biscuits between them and their own teas. Sherlock looked out at the darkening skies as the afternoon wore on into the evening. Snowfall was to be expected soon enough, and that was another reason Sherlock had been surprised of John’s request to meet. He would have thought that John would have liked to stay at home with Mary when there was threat of snow, but no… no, he was _here_. And that made Sherlock get a biscuit off the plate without John asking him to.

While he was eating his biscuit, he felt John’s foot slide on top of his, but neither of them made any sign of pulling away. Sherlock flexed his toes inside of his shoe and bumped the top against John’s sole. John cleared his throat roughly.

“I do, er, miss living with you. Certain… _things_... well, they aren’t the same.”

“Nothing is the same, John. Unless Mary conducts experiments, puts heads in the refrigerator, solves cases for Scotland Yard…”

John raised a hand, “All right, all right, I get it. Sherlock.”

“Mm?” Sherlock pulled his foot out from underneath John’s.

“I’d like to – if you would be all right with it, that is – I'd like to keep working with you. On my downtime from the clinic, whenever that may be. And of course I don’t mean every single time off, because, well… _Mary_. But I don’t want us to grow, um, apart. Right.” John tugged at the collar of his shirt and glanced away while Sherlock processed it all. Was it enough? More so. Was he, daresay, happier than before coming here? He couldn’t deny it. He couldn’t expect any more from John. This was – this was enough. More than the Christmas and birthday cards of distant friends, less than John breaking it off with Mary. It was…

“That’s... that's fine. I’m all right with that, John. Mycroft didn’t put you up to it, though, did he?” He looked at John, searching for any evidence of a lie as John spoke.

“No… he didn’t. Surprisingly.” Slight exhale, no sign of lying.

“Is this all you came for, then?”

John blinked, shook his head, reached out and put his hand on top of Sherlock’s; Sherlock’s breath caught in his throat and he tensed his fingers.

“I’d like to go on a walk with you. Just... I want you to tell me about it all again.” Sherlock raised an eyebrow and smiled a bit. John didn’t even have to tell him what _it_ was; everything was understood and something had settled between them, simmering the waters to calm. Sherlock knew he could never be Mary, did not want all that she received from John; he just wanted to know that John wouldn’t forget about him, wouldn’t put him away as another memory, as if he _had_ died the day he had jumped off St. Bart’s rooftop.

It was enough to still hold John’s attention, because what John gave him was better than what he could have ever fathomed before.

And he couldn’t get it anywhere else.


End file.
